August 31, 2011

WORD is an independent neighborhood bookstore in Greenpoint, the northernmost neighborhood of Brooklyn, that celebrated its fourth anniversary this March. Our primary goal is to be whatever our community needs us to be, which currently means carrying a lot of paperback fiction (especially classics), cookbooks, board books, and absurdly cute cards and stationery. In addition, we're fiends for a good event, from the classic author reading and Q&A to potlucks and a basketball league (and anything set in a bar). We're a small operation, just 1000 square feet and four people, but we read too much, so it all works out. If a weekly dose of WORD here isn't enough for you, follow us on Twitter: @wordbrooklyn.

Meloy (singer/songwriter of the Decemberists) and his wife Ellis (award-winning illustrator of, among others, The Mysterious Benedict Society books) team up to bring one of the most eagerly-anticipated kids' books of the fall. Prue McKeel's baby brother has been kidnapped by a murder of crows, and she has to brave the Impassable Wilderness outside of Portland -- and the secret, fantastical world therein -- to bring him back.

Stephanie declares this latest collection from Hitchens "a testament to the breadth and depth of my very favorite essayists by whom to be irritated (and a handy recap of the last decade of politics and literature to boot)."

The line that's getting bandied around for this book goes like this: The Art of Fielding is a novel about baseball the way that Moby-Dick is a novel about a whale. Catchy, right? We can tell you that fellow booksellers around the country are into this one, whether or not they've got baseball bona fides.

Marlantes' Matterhorn is one of Jenn's very favorite war novels ever written (which, seeing how she isn't a big war novel fan, is saying something) and his new book is another one worth picking up. Taking the experiences that made his novel so compelling, he's examined the culture of war -- the way we view it and our soldiers, the way we prepare or don't prepare them for battle -- and and found it lacking. A must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about the state of the military, sent a loved one into combat, or been there themselves.